Head on Fire: Burning down memory

This was a symposium about the work of each artist in the exhibition. I spoke about my work with electrocution, fie and memory, also screening a film of my electrocution and an app I developed to burn pixels from pictures when under stress

Power postures and landing pages, the long tail of Neoliberalism

When academics speak of ‘learning spaces’ and ‘learning platforms’, what kind of spaces are they evoking? When they use the term ‘personalisation’, who and what kind of people are they implicating in the personal? If we stop to consider these questions, it soon becomes apparent that personal learning platforms are inescapably ideological spaces, in which the student (often now framed as ‘the learner’), is tacitly modelled. But, since their pervasive introduction in the mid-2000s, online learning platforms have evolved into mechanisms not only for teaching, but increasingly as stages for the management of the academic self

AI/VR: situated animation in the Library of Babel

If cinema represents the ‘most replete and consuming instance of an interface for dreaming’, what more can we expect of virtual technologies and Artificial Intelligence, or indeed, of computation in general, to create animated works that surpass our longstanding, heterogeneous, heritage of time-based visual media? The promise of VR and AI is arguably that of an ontological and ethical shift, one that takes us closer to a posthuman animation. Through a practice-based research process the author reports on the ways in which a VR/AI work, ‘Return to the Library of Babel’, deploys procedural animation and emergent spaces, engendering a dynamic, animated realm, one of situated, emergent, subjects and objects, within what Sara Ahmed frames as a political economy of, and, one might add a logic, of ‘disorientation’. The paper was first presented at the 1st ANIVAE workshop on Animation in Virtual and Augmented Environments, 19 March 2018, Reutlingen, Germany

Turpin’s Cave: choice and deception in a virtual realm

The VR work Turpin's Cave (2018) began as an account of the author's childhood memories of a chimeric cave in Bostall Woods, South East London. That part of London is subject to dramatic sink holes and subsidence, which in this work are a metaphor for unreliable memory, but also, as the project unfolded, became a potent symbol for the increasingly precarious nature of contemporary employment. In creating this project, the author found herself engaging with a gig economy of actors operating within a creative precariat, in which the ‘choice’ and ‘flexibility’ of deregulated work arguably creates a veneer of individual freedom. Through this project the author seeks to deconstruct some of the rhetoric of empathy, choice and immersivity that has grown around VR, evaluating whether the ontological instability of the form has non-trivial connections to the increasing precarity of global employment (Wall, Lesley, Matthew Revie, and Tim Bedford. 2018. Risk, Reliability and Safety: Innovating Theory and Practice. London: Taylor & Francis)

Teaching Machines: Platforms, pedagogies and the wicked problem of design thinking

In the midst of a pandemic and associated economic crisis, the social and ethical imperatives of critically engaged pedagogies are arguably more urgent than ever. Pedagogy is at risk within the neoliberal university, subsumed by a homogeneous free-market business ontology which frames subjects as entrepreneurial, enfolding us all in what we might call a ‘hidden curriculum’. Data-driven corporations are increasingly able to define for all of us what knowledge is; for them, the pandemic is an opportunity to gain even more control over the globalised ‘episteme’. How then, in the context of Art and Design education can we resist the forces of neoliberalism, and instead support a pedagogy which, as Coles suggests (2014), should provoke students ‘to demand equality for themselves and others’? This paper presents a diffracted pedagogy, informed by the ongoing principles of Design Justice and a posthuman re-formulation of agency, questioning structural forces of technology (McQuillan, 20219) and avoiding what McQuillan describes as the framing of ‘society as categories of actuarial risk’ in which people's lives are filtered through ‘the epistemology of insurance and instrumentalism’ (ibid). This aligns with Giroux’s plurality of voices but also encompasses an extended concept of agency and process, as proposed by a posthuman, or Inhuman pedagogy. In particular, this paper critiques the colonial, not to say white supremacist, constructs which underpin ‘Design Thinking’, an approach to design and education which is still pervasive within UK Art and Design colleges and deeply embedded in the construction of teaching platforms. Examples of student- led platforms such as Strike Radio will be offered as a counter to the neoliberal academy

Navigating Subjectivity: South, a Psychometric Text Adventure.

South: A Psychometric Text Adventure is an artist’s book and a set of software programs. The South project re-conceptualises the artist’s book and wider bookforms, encouraging models of interaction that are aware of specific locations and individual subjects. These alternatives are a response to what this thesis frames as two rapidly stagnating forms. The thesis argues that both the artist’s book and electronic literature (see the glossary on page 343 for definitions of the key terms used throughout this thesis) have not made a significant impact on the cultural landscape of the early 21st century. Nor have they made a significant use of the key technological changes that have occurred since the first electronic literature emerged in the late 1970s (in the form of interactive fictions, sometimes called ‘Text Adventures’, such as Colossal Cave Adventure (Crowther, 1976)). In order to move forward from the increasingly problematic, disembodied, computational models used in these early digital works (discussed in chapters two, five and six) this thesis specifically recommends the formation of temporally specific, contextualised, relationships between readers and digital texts. The South project presents a multi-linear, situated and embodied form of intra-activity (see glossary) as an alternative to more linear forms of interaction. These ideas and their implications for electronic literature and artist’s books will be clarified and outlined throughout this thesis, as will the rationale for framing them as valid models for moving electronic literature and artist’s books into a position of cultural and technological relevance

MA Digital Direction, MA Information Experience Design

This paper addresses some of the key research imperatives two courses, MA Digital Direction and MA Information Experience Design, embody, including the status of virtual and augmented realities, two technologies that are ontologically unstable, raising urgent research questions for staff and students alike. For IED Information can be quantitative or qualitative, numerical data, personal narratives, or socio-political issues. These are examined through investigative and experiential research, through a range of methods, to create transformative, immersive and multisensory experiences, with emphasis on content, context, materiality and atmosphere. For MA Digital Direction, the catalysing impact of digital technologies associated with time based media are addressed, in particular the course is concerned with both experimental and established approaches to production, direction, content creation and communication, in order to create innovative forms of storytelling and narrative experience that engage audiences in new ways. Both courses deploy augmented and virtual realities, with MA Digital Direction devoting a term to Immersive Adventures. And yet, the status of VR is still uncertain and has been a challenge for some years (Hillis, 1996: 70). Like the photograph, it is not clear exactly what VR is, whether it is a medium, a tool, an event or an extension of cinema. The ontological status of what it feels like to encounter VR, is also an enigma, in line with Dennett’s (1991) assertions about ineffable, subjective experience, or qualia. These and other questions about VR/AR technologies, as well as teaching strategies, are at the core of a new research hub established by academics within the School of Communication. The hub aims to address the question of how we can best teach a subject which no one truly understands, identifying some of the possibilities inherent in our own uncertainty and disorientation

Skype, code and shouting: a digitally mediated drama between Egypt and Scotland

Springtime (Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 19 May 2012) was a computationally mediated theatrical performance involving Arab and Glaswegian-Arab actors and musicians. The project was produced by Ankur Theatre Productions, Scotland’s foremost black and ethnic minority theatre company. Springtime was directed by the dramaturge Shabina Aslam. Against the backdrop of the “Arab Spring” and its aftermath, the play explored issues of authenticity and identity as mediated through multiple technologies. This paper explores the impact and significance of the production and evaluates the use of Skype, social media and custom-made software in the writing, rehearsal and final performance stages of the play

The Phi Books: Borders, Doors and Walls as a Collaboration Methodology

The Phi books' is a project that uses the house as a metaphor to explore the notions of interdisciplinary collaboration, consent and shared authorship. It uses participatory narrative, algorithms and designs about the participant's mental or physical houses to explore how borders, walls and doors facilitate collaboration. The project started in 2008 and since then it has lead to the production of books, interactive material, conference presentations and performances produced by the authors and the participants, which are both fictional and imaginative while also being methodologically reflective

Bare nothingness: Situated subjects in embodied artists' systems

This chapter examines the current state of digital artworks, arguing that they have not yet made a groundbreaking impact on the cultural landscape of the 21st century and suggesting that a reason for this lack of notoriety is the obsolete model of agency deployed by many digital artists. As an alternative to what is framed as out-of-date forms of interactivity, the chapter highlights evolving research into interactive systems, artists' tools, applications, and techniques that will provide readers with an insightful and up-to-date examination of emerging multimedia technology trends. In particular, the chapter looks at situated computing and embodied systems, in which context-aware models of human subjects can be combined with sensor technology to expand the agencies at play in interactive works. The chapter connects these technologies to Big Data, Crowdsourcing and other techniques from artificial intelligence that expand our understanding of interaction and participation